


The Pearl of His Oyster

by vice_versa



Series: Make Redder His Roses [2]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: Anal Fingering, BDSM, Bad BDSM Etiquette, Bondage, Exhibitionism, Facials, Femdom, Humiliation, Masturbation, Mildly Dubious Consent, Multi, Pining, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Prostate Massage, Rimming, Sex Work, Spanking, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-14 23:28:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28553904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vice_versa/pseuds/vice_versa
Summary: He’s barely seen Vane since that night, and despite his attempts to deny it to himself, he’s eventually forced to face the truth: he feels aggrieved, almost abandoned. It’s foolish and illogical: the weather has been set fair and the winds favourable, so Vane has hardly even been in Nassau, with the Ranger out after one prize or another. In any case, Silver has been taught his lesson: there’s no reason why Vane would want a repeat performance.Silver can't admit the things he wants, even to himself. Fortunately (?) for him, he gets them anyway.
Relationships: Background Charles Vane/Eleanor Guthrie, Background John Silver/Eleanor Guthrie, Charles Vane/John Silver/Idelle, Idelle/John Silver (Black Sails), John Silver/Charles Vane, Mention of Eleanor Guthrie/Max
Series: Make Redder His Roses [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2092068
Comments: 8
Kudos: 18





	The Pearl of His Oyster

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel to [Make Redder His Roses](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27232294) and will make much more sense if you read that first.
> 
> Please be aware of the tags on both fics. Neither is intended to be a realistic representation of a BDSM relationship or of sex work. Improbable as it may seem, this one is possibly even more pure unadulterated filth than the last one.
> 
> This was very much the Difficult Second Fic and caused a lot of anguish along the way, so if you like it, please let me know! 
> 
> The title once again comes from Algernon Charles Swinburne’s “Dolores”, which you can read [here](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45283/dolores-notre-dame-des-sept-douleurs). The context of the quote may or may not be significant; I will leave that interpretation up to my readers.
> 
> * * *

For days afterwards, he hadn’t been able to sit down, or sleep on his back, or even bend over, without receiving a sharp reminder of exactly what Vane did to him. Sometimes it would be awkward: he’d be mid-way through charming a potential client, or already in bed with them, and then one incautious movement would take him straight back to that night: himself face-down, ass-up, and Vane’s belt, and Vane’s hands, and Vane’s cock… And he’d stammer and fumble and lose his thread, sometimes lose a customer into the bargain. Despite the loss of earnings he couldn’t bring himself to care, because none of the customers were Vane. He treasured the hot, stinging stripes on his ass as if they were a gift, or a promise.

When the pain began to fade he’d felt he was losing something. He’d squint over his shoulder at his ass in the mirror, trying to see if the belting had left scars, half-hoping that it had, that Vane had marked him. But his skin looked as soft and smooth as ever, belying the sense that, in some deeper though invisible way, Vane had broken him apart. Idiotically, he’d kept the trousers that Vane had ruined, and sometimes, when he could no longer resist, he’d put them on, alone in his room, and kneel by the bed, offering himself up to his imaginary captain while he jerked himself off. Afterwards he felt dirty, pathetic.

He’s barely seen Vane since that night, and despite his attempts to deny it to himself, he’s eventually forced to face the truth: he feels aggrieved, almost abandoned. It’s foolish and illogical: the weather has been set fair and the winds favourable, so Vane has hardly even been in Nassau, with the _Ranger_ out after one prize or another. In any case, Silver has been taught his lesson: there’s no reason why Vane would want a repeat performance.

In his wilder and more desperate moments, around three o’clock in the morning, he’s considered fucking Eleanor deliberately, to provoke him. He imagines himself striding into her office, pushing past Mr Scott; she’s hungry for him, of course, in this fantasy, and he bends her over her own desk and brings her to heights of pleasure that not even Vane can manage. A bravura performance to which Vane would be forced to react. Perhaps he would respond in kind, fucking him over the desk, paper and ink spilled everywhere, door and windows open so everyone would know.

But he daren’t, of course. He’s actually more frightened of Eleanor than of Vane: he’s not at all sure that she would, in fact, welcome his attentions, and he doesn’t think she’d set up an elaborate revenge plan. She’d just have him shot.

She hasn’t visited him in the brothel since his night with Vane. Perhaps Vane warned her off after all, although he can’t imagine what Vane could possibly have said or done that would actually have made her obey him. It’s more likely that she has simply grown tired of Silver. He thinks he’s seen her once or twice with the French girl, Max.

He misses her. Not so much for her own person, as because she’s one step closer to Vane. He wants to hear her make the same little gasps that Vane elicits from her, press his lips to the love bites that Vane has left on her breasts and neck. Most of all he wants to put his cock where Vane’s has been, slide himself in after Vane has thoroughly fucked her, opened her up. Perhaps she’d still be moist and swollen from fucking him, slick with his cum. Silver could bury his face in her and lap the taste of Vane from her cunt.

But all this is wishful thinking. He hasn’t seen Vane, he hasn’t seen Eleanor, and everything that Vane did to him is receding inexorably into the past, slipping away from him.

* * *

So when Idelle approaches him one afternoon, he thinks, why the fuck not? He pushes down the nonsensical feeling that it is somehow disloyal to Vane; he’s sure that Vane fucks his way around the Caribbean any chance he gets, a whore in every port. (Something about this mental image isn’t entirely unappealing, a thought that Silver doesn’t examine too closely.) He, too, can fuck other people - when did the world become divided into ‘Vane’ and ‘other people’? - and Idelle is beautiful and she has amazing tits and most importantly, she’s _there_ and seems to be interested.

He doesn’t ask himself _why_ she is suddenly interested: Idelle is meant to be his distraction from thinking too much. He’d noticed her when he first arrived; she’s hard to miss, with her breasts barely contained by a corset straining at the laces, her make-up layered on just thick enough to say _cheap._ In fact, she is one of Noonan’s most expensive whores, and with good reason, but a hint of the gutter is highly appealing to a certain kind of man, and there are a lot of that kind of men in Nassau. Silver himself is not immune.

Despite this, and despite his fabled silver tongue, he had never previously succeeded in attracting Idelle’s attention. By becoming a whore himself, and mingling with the girls as one of their own, he’d acquired a strange status: privileged, and yet oddly desexed. Every day, he’s surrounded by casual nudity: one half-naked girl fastening another into a corset; a bare breast pressing against his arm as a girl leans past him to apply her kohl in the tarnished mirror. But none of it is aimed at him; he might as well be a piece of furniture. They’re fond of him, yes, in a way that they generally aren’t fond of their clients, but it’s an offhand, faintly condescending fondness, with nothing sexual about it. In the lazy late mornings, when there are no customers, he might find himself sitting at a girl’s feet, or with his head resting in another’s lap, while they play with his hair and plait it into little braids, as if he is a doll or a favoured pet. Sometimes he gets hard, and they tease him, good-naturedly, until he subsides again.

Moreover, Idelle’s attitude towards him has markedly cooled since Vane fucked him; she was usually Vane’s first choice among the girls, and she clearly isn’t pleased at the idea of losing his favour. Silver has considered trying to reassure her, but he doesn’t know how he would explain what happened between him and Vane: he can’t explain it to himself. _It was a one-off_ , he could say; _it wasn’t because he likes me._ But these are possibilities that he can’t bring himself to face: he’s afraid, deep down, that if he speaks them out loud it will make them true, irrevocable, and then he would be lost.

“Come on, Silvertongue,” her voice brings him back to the present. “Show me what you can do with that tongue of yours, we’ve all heard the stories.” She’s so close that her breasts are crushed against his chest, threatening with each intake of breath to spill out of her corset; her perfume is so strong that he feels dizzy. Holding his gaze, she slips a finger into her own mouth and draws it out slowly, before tracing it down his cheek. A cheap whore’s trick - he’s heard the girls discussing such things often enough, laughing at how easily they work on the men - and yet it’s working on him, too. He can feel his cock stiffening and knows it must be blatantly obvious to her as well, pressed up against him as she is. He thinks how easy it would be to take her upstairs, flip up her little black skirt - it’s no obstacle, more a sort of decorative frill - and fuck her soft wet cunt until he loses all thoughts of Vane inside her.

“We’ve both got the afternoon off,” she wheedles, “why not have some fun? No charge.” She grinds herself against his erection, and it’s all he needs to make his mind up.

* * *

As soon as the door is closed he reaches for her, but she steps back smartly. “Clothes off,” she instructs him; then, seeing his hesitation, “If we’re doing this, you do what I say.”

The change in tone is disconcerting, but Silver begins to unbutton his shirt, keeping his eyes on her breasts, the tantalising gap in her corset that lets him see just not quite as much as he’d like to. Freeing the last button, he drops his shirt on the floor, but she clicks her fingers and points. “Pick that up.”

He bends to reach for it, but just as his fingers are about to close over it, she kicks it under the bed so he is forced to drop to his hands and knees and scrabble about amid the dust and filth. She lifts her foot and presses it firmly between his shoulder blades. “You will take all your clothes off, fold them neatly, and place them on the table by the window. Then you will lie across my knee, face down, so that I can tie your hands. Do you understand?”

So this is how it is going to go. It’s not what he had envisaged, but he is by no means averse - at least in this context - to being told what to do. Or (the thought comes unbidden from deep inside him) to not being given a choice. But this thought leads inevitably to Vane, so he clamps down on it quickly.

Idelle is waiting for an answer, and he nods his head. She grinds her heel into him painfully; he emits an involuntary yelp. “Answer me properly. Politely.”

He opens his mouth and immediately sneezes from the dust. “Yes, Idelle. I understand,” he says hurriedly. He peeks up at her through his hair: with her foot resting on his back, her skirt is slightly lifted, revealing a long expanse of pale thigh. He’s agonisingly close to being able to see more, but her hem falls just low enough to deny him; and then she pushes his face away with the side of her foot, so he can’t look any more. “Dirty boy! Maybe later. If you’re lucky.”

It is when he is walking to the table, naked, with his pile of neatly folded clothes, that he realises - with a sudden jolt low down in his belly - that this is the room where Vane brought him. It looks different in daylight and few of the rooms have many distinguishing features in any case, but he recognises details that he wasn’t even consciously aware of at the time: the shabby yellow curtains, the bullet hole in the wall by the door where some past encounter had gone terribly wrong. He remembers Vane pouring himself a glass of rum from the bottle on this very table; sees again, in his mind’s eye, Vane’s throat working as he swallowed. This is where Vane beat him, humiliated him, fucked him, and then, most bafflingly of all, fell calmly asleep twined around him. He wonders whether to ask Idelle if they can use a different room, but she would ask him why, and he has no sensible answer.

Also, he is already undressed, and he wouldn’t put it past Idelle to lead him naked along the balcony if the opportunity presented itself. He will simply not think about Vane; there is absolutely no reason to do so. It will be fine.

* * *

“Over my knee.”

He hesitates for a moment, because obeying her without a fight is like admitting - to her and to himself - that he wants this. Her expression hardens. “I won’t tell you again. Get over here. Or you can go back downstairs, but you won’t get another chance at this.”

He lowers his eyes, climbs onto the bed, wriggles into position over her knee - as she must have known he would. It has less to do with his fear of missing the opportunity and more to do with the alternative: what would he do, if he went back downstairs at this juncture? Sit, drink, pine over Vane. Wait until the sun set, and the place started filling up with customers, and Vane failed to come for him, again. Better this way: there is a sense of safety, almost, that comes with relinquishing control. He knows what is happening here; the script is written and his role is simply to submit. He can forget Vane for a while, lose himself in this.

His face is pressed into the creased, greyish sheet, his cock trapped against her thighs. She double-checks the knots on his wrists, making sure he is tied securely, and lightly slaps his bare ass. “We all know what you like, and I’m going to be the one to give it to you.”

This throws Silver completely. Has word got around about his night with Vane, or can they just see it in his eyes somehow? He knows that at least some of the girls must have heard him that night - the smacks of Vane’s belt on his ass, the noises he made - but the idea of them all sitting around discussing it is utterly demeaning. He feels his cheeks flushing; and also, his cock starting to rise.

She traces her nails along his inner thighs and over his ass; parts his cheeks and flicks her finger across his asshole. Goosebumps rise on his skin and he whimpers, just a little, anticipating everything she might do to him, conscious of how exposed he is.

Then with no warning the door opens and he reflexively tries to curl himself up, hide himself away, but Idelle has him pinned down, spread out across her knee. A figure enters, silhouetted against the light from the balcony, before closing the door behind him and leaning against it, arms folded.

Vane.

Silver has fantasised so often over the past few weeks about Vane catching him in a compromising position, and then taking advantage of it, that he almost loses his mind. The room dips and whirls around him, and he has to close his eyes and breathe deeply for a few moments before it stills. Then his brain starts up again at twice the speed: what, exactly, is happening here? Neither Vane nor Idelle seems surprised, so this must have been planned, but by whom? He can’t imagine what could possibly be in it for Idelle, or how she would persuade Vane to do her bidding in something like this. Which leaves Vane himself… Does he think Silver needs another lesson? Is it just a sideline in some other game he is playing? Is he… Does he… Silver’s brain sticks and grinds to a halt, mired in a tangled mess of hopes and fears.

Vane seats himself at the table, pours himself some rum, lights a cigarillo. He’s sitting behind Silver and to the side, so Silver can’t easily see him without twisting his neck uncomfortably; but Vane has an excellent view of Silver, and specifically - Silver is painfully aware - of his bare, up-tilted ass. He nods at Idelle. “I see you’ve got him ready.”

Silver’s cock stirs at the idea that he has been prepared for Vane, like an animal dressed for the table. Idelle must feel his tumescence against her thigh, because she brings her hand down sharply, making him yelp and jump. There is no preparation, no warning: she’s got him right where she wants him, and no longer needs to tease or cajole; she can do whatever she likes to him now.

Idelle is precise where Vane was brutal, and although her hand hurts less than the belt, she knows exactly how to time and direct her strokes for maximum impact. Each spank falls in the same place, on the softest and tenderest part of his ass, so the pain builds and builds without respite and each stroke hurts more than the last. He can barely catch his breath, and his head whirls with the pain and with the knowledge that he is being exhibited to Vane, that Vane is watching Idelle’s handprints bloom red across his ass cheeks.

Will he join in? Silver imagines Idelle holding him down while Vane takes his belt to his already warmed and smarting ass. He’s embarrassed by how much he wants this, wants Vane to punish him, hurt him. But when he sneaks a glance at Vane, he is simply sitting in the corner smoking, every line of his body suggesting relaxed disinterest. This pains Silver more than the beating, more than the humiliation of being put over Idelle’s knee. For Vane to get him into this position and then just to _ignore_ him… He deliberately plays up his reactions: biting his lip, squirming, gasping a little more loudly. Sneaking a glance from under his hair, he catches Vane’s eye and sees him raise an eyebrow: Vane has seen through his play-acting and knows exactly what he is up to. At the same time, Silver is suddenly sure that it is working: Vane _is_ interested, despite his calm demeanour. He likes seeing Silver like this, ass bare and tipped up over Idelle’s knee, likes seeing him take his punishment. He raises his ass a little more and parts his legs so that Vane can see his rapidly-stiffening cock. A moment later he jumps in pain as Idelle’s hand slaps down, right across his asshole and the tender skin between his legs; she has taken advantage of his vulnerable posture to spank him right where he is most sensitive. Reflexively he clamps his legs shut again and then… then he sees Vane’s face.

He’s leaning forwards now, with his chin propped on his hand, and his gaze is fixed on Silver and his pupils have grown huge. Any pretence of disinterest is at an end. If this is what it takes to get his attention… Silver spreads his legs again, wider than before, opening himself up and knowing all too well what he’s letting himself in for, but already breathless with the knowledge that Vane is enjoying watching him like this.

He knows that Idelle won’t spare him, and he’s right. Each of her strikes is precise and stinging; his breath hisses through his teeth each time her hand falls. There’s enough of a pause after each one for him to begin to anticipate the next, half-eager, half-apprehensive. He knows he deserves this, he’s been fantasising about it ever since his last punishment from Vane, and yet with each slap dealt to his exposed, quivering asshole, he struggles against the temptation to close his legs, tuck his ass in, make himself less of a target. But he squints over his shoulder and sees that Vane’s hand has drifted to his cock, and he makes himself hold the position, showing Vane as much of himself as he can, showing him that he can take it. The knowledge that he’s doing this to himself, asking for it, turns him on almost unbearably even as tears squeeze unbidden from his eyes. He wonders whether Vane will fuck him later, and the thought of Vane’s cock pushing into his reddened, thoroughly spanked asshole almost makes him come on the spot.

Time slips and telescopes as Silver holds himself open for his punishment. His face warms at the knowledge of how visible he’s making himself, how available, how vulnerable, sacrificing his dignity - and his ass - on the altar of his obsession. He can feel Vane’s gaze on him like a tangible thing, sense the tiny reactions that Vane can’t quite conceal - the changes in breathing, the tensing of muscles, the tightening of his hand on his cock - each time that Idelle’s palm bites into Silver’s soft skin. He hopes - at some level he hardly dares acknowledge - that Vane will reward him for how obediently he is taking his punishment, how willingly he’s showing himself off. His ass feels raw now, and he sets his jaw stubbornly, but despite his best efforts he’s flinching with each stroke.

It’s Vane who puts a stop to it, finally, just as Silver is starting to wonder whether they are going to make him beg, and whether they will stop even if he does. Rising from his chair, he trails his fingers over Silver’s bare ass, along his back, brushing past his cheek, casually, as a man might run his fingers along a table. It’s a fleeting, almost incidental contact, another of those odd, surreptitious moments of gentleness, barely there before it is gone again.

“Get him on his knees and hold him still for me.”

Idelle wriggles her knees out from under him, and he has no time to think about what is happening before she has crushed his face into her cleavage. She’s sitting on his bound wrists - he can feel the warmth and wetness of her - and her own hands are clasped round the back of his head, making it impossible for him to move. He’s completely enfolded by her breasts, her heartbeat loud in his ears, unable to see, barely able to breathe - his nose is blocked, but he can just tilt his head enough to snatch little gasps of air through his mouth. His face is hot and, despite the difficulty in breathing, his head feels comfortingly protected; by contrast, his rear end feels cold and defenceless. He can’t hear or see what Vane is doing, or planning to do, and he feels as though every inch of his skin is tingling: wanting Vane to touch him and at the same time, poised to flinch away from an impending blow.

The touch, when it comes, is unexpected: Vane’s calloused hands on his hips are swiftly followed by Vane’s tongue tracing tiny, delicate circles around his asshole. It’s wet and warm and somehow both relieves and re-awakens the soreness, soothing the pain while also making him aware of just how tender he is. It’s also shockingly intimate, and he doesn’t know what undoes him more: that it’s happening at all, or that Idelle is right there, watching it happen. When Vane’s tongue pushes inside the little ring of muscle, he lets out a sob of pure abandon into Idelle’s breasts. Being forced to take punishment for Vane had already unravelled him; being forced to accept pleasure from him is, if anything, even more shattering. With his hands still tied and his head held firmly by Idelle, he has no choice but to surrender to the delicious ignominy of Vane’s tongue dipping in and out of him, teasing him, taunting him each time with the threat of stopping, and then plunging back in. He pushes his ass back onto Vane’s mouth, showing him that he wants it, and in response Vane places a hand on each of his buttocks and parts his cheeks, opening him up even further.

It’s too much and at the same time not enough: with his hands tied he can’t even touch himself, and he is desperate to feel Vane’s hands on him, Vane’s cock inside him. “Please,” he whispers, and yet when Vane pulls away from him, he can hardly bear even a moment without Vane touching him. He whimpers and wriggles and lifts his ass further up in the air, knowing he’s making a spectacle of himself and not caring: he’ll do anything, anything, for Vane not to leave him like this. Vane’s spit is cooling on his skin and his asshole feels empty and neglected, and he’s hopelessly turned on by his own helplessness, the power that Vane has over him. The power to do whatever he wants to Silver’s body, but also something more insidious and shameful: the power to make Silver want whatever Vane will allow him.

“Out.” Vane jerks his head at the door, and Silver has a moment of utter horror before he realises that Vane means Idelle. He wonders briefly whether she is disappointed, or angry, or satisfied at a job well done; will she go downstairs and tell the others what he looked like with his cheeks bared over her knee, how he whined with Vane’s tongue up his ass? He can’t bring himself to care about her feelings, or what she might do in retaliation: he would cheerfully throw his closest friends overboard - along with whatever remains of his self-respect - for the chance to be alone with Vane right now. She vanishes from his mind the moment the door closes behind her.

Vane flips him onto his back and stares down at him. He squirms under Vane’s scrutiny, aware of what he must look like, with his swollen cock, his reddened ass and wet, unfilled hole.

“You’re desperate for my cock, aren’t you?”

Silver nods vigorously and then turns his face away, as if he can hide himself in the mattress, despite the fact that the rest of his body is laid out naked before Vane’s eyes.

Vane snorts. “Keep you hungry.”

At this, Silver looks back at Vane, pleadingly, shamelessly begging with his eyes. _I need it_ , he wants to say. _I need you._ He still can’t bring himself to say it out loud, but it might as well be written on his face.

Vane laughs quietly, in the back of his throat. It’s not an unkind laugh, but Silver feels his chest tighten with the fear that his own obvious need is at best an irrelevance to Vane, at worst a joke. He opens his mouth to say something - he has no idea what - and then Vane’s oiled fingers slip into him and his words falter and collapse into a breathy, gasping moan. He closes his eyes, afraid of what they will reveal of him, but Vane is not letting him off so easily. “Look at me, boy.”

“Yes, captain,” Silver says, and feels his cock throb at calling Vane his captain. Judging by Vane’s expression, he is not averse to it either, though he says nothing in response; with his free hand, he brushes Silver’s tangled hair out of his eyes.

Although he’s longing for Vane’s cock this is oddly more intimate: Vane’s gaze is fixed on him – his face, not just his ass – and he is entirely focused on Silver’s pleasure, rather than his own. He works a third finger into Silver and it stretches his sore asshole just beyond what is comfortable, but he leans into the pain, leans into the deliciously vertiginous knowledge that Vane can hurt him if he wants to. But Vane's fingers, once inside him, are surprisingly gentle, rubbing and kneading at that sensitive spot while his other hand - finally, finally - takes hold of Silver's achingly hard cock.

Vane’s palm is rough, his grasp firm, and for one giddy moment Silver thinks he is coming right then, just from Vane’s hand on him, touching him exactly where he’s been longing to be touched, stroking his bare, straining cock, his fist sliding over the flushed pink head. How different Vane’s hand looks from his own; he’ll never be able to touch himself again without thinking of Vane’s long, strong fingers gripping his cock, his gold rings catching the light as his hand moves, his scarred knuckles and broken nails. The digits of Vane’s other hand are curling inside him, beckoning, beckoning, as if calling Silver to him, and Silver would go anywhere with Vane, do anything for him, take any punishment from him, just provided that he sometimes allows Silver this. It’s a sweet, melting, exquisite pleasure, suffusing his whole body, and the fact that it is Charles Vane who is doing this to him - _for_ him - is like drunkenness and glory and flags flying and _oh…_ Vane’s hands keep moving, on and in him, and he can feel his cock hardening even more and his balls tightening, and when he comes it feels like a surrender, as if he is giving himself to Vane entirely. He’s wrecked, ruined, like a ship that has dashed itself on a jagged shore, and he would take this shore over any safe harbour.

* * *

Silver is still floating in the languorous aftermath of his orgasm when he feels a weight on his legs, and opens his eyes to find that Vane has a knee on each of his parted thighs, immobilising him still further. He also has his cock out, and is stroking himself.

Silver draws in a breath, astonished and thrilled that he is being allowed to witness this most private of acts, and that he, John Silver, is the object of it, spread out beneath Vane like a canvas on which Vane can paint his fantasies. Vane is still fully dressed, and somehow this makes it dirtier, more obscene: only his cock is bare, pale in his sun-browned hand. Spent and broken as he is, Silver feels a shiver of excitement deep inside himself; he’s a bit worried that if he gets turned on again he might literally die, but it seems worth the risk.

Vane closes his eyes, as if trying to recreate the privacy that he doesn’t have, tipping his head back so Silver can see the curve of his throat. Silver longs to touch him but his hands are still tied, so he caresses Vane with his eyes while Vane can’t see him doing it. His long, salt-matted hair, now in some disarray; the sharp planes of his face; the mesmerising movement of his arm muscles as he works his cock. His hand is speeding up now, his knees pressing down harder on Silver’s thighs; he’s making small, half-choked noises in the back of his throat, as if he doesn’t want to cry out but can’t help himself. Silver wants to look at all of him at once: the veins standing out in his hand and his cock, his parted lips, the strain in his body as he pushes himself to the brink. His hand is working more and more furiously, and then with a sudden tensing of his muscles he groans, opens his eyes and holds Silver’s fervent, imploring gaze with his own as he spurts all over Silver’s chest and face. Bound and pinned as he is, Silver can’t even wipe himself clean: he just has to lie there as Vane’s cum drips down his chin and into his hair.

Vane looks down at Silver’s cock, half-hard again already. He’s fully back in control and looks very pleased with himself. “Keep you hungry,” he says, again.

He moves to untie Silver’s wrists and then stops, pulls back. “They’ll find you and undo you eventually, when they want the room,” he says, and smirks.

Silver can hardly bring himself to care. He knows, somewhere in the back of his ravaged mind, that it will be embarrassing when the time comes, when one of the girls walks in, maybe with a client in tow, and sees him there, naked, sticky with Vane’s cum and his own. But right now, all he can feel is that he wants to stay like this, marked as Vane’s possession, as if the crude rope ties are Vane’s hands still holding him. He has the crazed, illogical thought that perhaps he can just stay here, until the next time Vane requires him.

Next time. Will there be a next time? Vane is about to leave and Silver needs to speak, but he can’t marshal his words. Once again, Vane has robbed him of his facility with language, the thing that defined him, previously: before Vane redefined him. “I - you - if you.” He stumbles, starting and failing over and over. Perhaps it is a mistake to say anything at all. Vane leans on the doorframe, irritation starting to creep into his face. “Out with it, boy.”

Silver makes a herculean effort. “Next time. I mean, if you want. If you want to do this again. You don’t have to pay.”

Vane’s face is completely impassive, and Silver wonders whether he has offended him. Perhaps he has made it sound as though he thinks Vane cannot afford him; not exactly the way to ingratiate himself with one of Nassau’s most successful pirate captains. He starts to babble, words spilling out of him now. “I mean, I know you can, obviously, but you, you don’t have to, if Noonan makes trouble I’ll sort it with him, I’ll reimburse him myself if necessary.” He takes a breath. “You’re not… not a customer.” It’s the closest he can come to saying what he really feels, whatever that is; he doesn’t really know himself.

The silence stretches out, endlessly it seems, and Silver is afraid that he has ruined everything. Then Vane finally speaks. “I know.”

Is that it? Silver has put a lot on the line here: his livelihood, his self-respect, perhaps something else that he can’t put into words. And Vane simply takes it as his due, as if he assumes Silver will just fall into his lap. The worst of it is that he is right.

He opens the door, and pauses in the doorway, as if he is going to say something else: but then he is gone and the door clicks shut behind him. But Silver remembers the words he said earlier, that are now lodged in Silver’s mind and that keep circling in his head, fraught with promise and with possibilities.

Keep you hungry. _Keep you._

**Author's Note:**

> This is dedicated to [RachelALoewen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RachelALoewen), for support and encouragement and also for the line, “Is it just a sideline in some other game he is playing?” which I shamelessly stole.
> 
> And to [whumpthereitis](https://whumpthereitis.tumblr.com/) on tumblr for your lovely comments relating to the last fic, and for the conversation that led to the “I need it” line... which appears to have developed into an entire theme.


End file.
